Oil Falls Impervious to Iraq Crisis

West Texas Intermediate and Brent headed for their third weekly drop as supply risks eased in Libya and Iraq while crude inventories expanded at the U.S. oil hub.

Futures slid as much as 0.7 percent in New York and are poised for the longest run of weekly declines since November. Libya’s supply gained as the Sharara field resumed production and two oil-export terminals reopened. Crude stockpiles at Cushing, Oklahoma, rose the most since January, the Energy Information Administration reported on July 9. Fighting in Iraq, the second-largest OPEC member, hasn’t spread to the country’s south, home to three-quarters of its output.

“Recent news that Libya will resume the export from two major terminals have removed parts of the risk premium,” Thina Saltvedt, an analyst at Oslo-based Nordea Markets, said by e-mail. “And no news that the fighting in Iraq is spreading to the southern oil rich areas have given the oil market a breathing space, at least for the moment.”

WTI for August delivery dropped as much as 71 cents to $102.22 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange and was at $102.28 at 1:50 p.m. London time. The contract climbed 64 cents to $102.93 yesterday, advancing for the first time in 10 days. The volume of all futures traded was about 15 percent below the 100-day average for the time of day. Prices have declined 1.7 percent this week.

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Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.

MarketPulse is a forex, commodities, and global indices analysis, and forex news site providing timely and accurate information on major economic trends, technical analysis, and worldwide events that impact different asset classes and investors.

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